Page 11 of Viper's Desire
I need her.
On Sunday, I do something with no good reason behind it.
I leave the bike and drive my truck to the chapel where her father preaches.
The lot is packed with sedans and minivans baking in the Arizona sun. I want to see her in the world where her father raised her.
So, I go inside and take the last row, and sit in a clean shirt with my sleeves pulled down over the ink.
Her father is a short man behind the podium, gray coming in at the temples. He preaches about obedience. About a woman’s place under a man’s roof. About daughters who wander off the path their fathers set for them.
He’s looking at Eden in the front pew when he says that last part.
Eden’s up there in a dress buttoned to her throat, hands folded, eyes down. She doesn’t talk. She doesn’t smile. The woman sitting in the pew is nothing like the one who stitched up my stab wound in the middle of the road.
She’s smaller here. Made quiet on purpose.
I sit in the last row and watch a man teach a whole room that the best person I’ve ever met ought to keep her mouth shut.
That doesn’t sit well with me.
The rest of the sermon is much of the same. When it’s over, I wait by the truck while everyone files out.
People line up to shake the preacher’s hand on the steps. I stay where the cars hide me, figuring I’ll watch her get in her parents’ car and go, and that’ll be that.
She finds me anyway.
She comes around the side of my truck still in that buttoned-up dress, and her whole face changes the second she sees me. She’s happy to see me. The folded-up girl from the front pew is gone.
“You came,” she says, quiet, glancing at the crowd. “To my dad’s service.”
“Wanted to see it.”
“And?”
I shrug. “Now I’ve seen it.”
She huffs a laugh, but her eyes don’t hold it. “That bad?”
“He holds you back.”
Her smile drops. “Yeah. He does.”
We’re standing close. Closer than a second ago. I don’t remember moving. Her face is tipped up to mine, and the heat’s coming off the asphalt. A piece of red hair sticks to her cheek.
I lift my hand to her cheek to brush the hair back. She doesn’t pull away. She leans into it, and her lips part, and I start to lean down?—
“Eden!”
Her father, calling across the lot.
She steps back so fast she stumbles. I catch her elbow and let go just as quickly. The happiness in her face shuts off. The closed-off girl is in front of me again before she even turns around.
“I have to go, Viper.”
“Tanner,” I tell her.
“What?”
